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Bryn Mawr College

liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, US

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ995265 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bryn Mawr College ( brin MAR, Welsh: [brɨn ˈmaur]) is a private women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of historically women's colleges in the United States. The college has an enrollment of about 1,350 undergraduate students and 450 graduate students. It was one of the first women's colleges in the United States to offer graduate education through a PhD.

History

Bryn Mawr College is a private women's liberal arts college founded in 1885. The Graduate School is co-educational. The name "bryn mawr" is Welsh for big hill. It is named after the town of Bryn Mawr, in which the campus is located. The town of Bryn Mawr had previously been named Humphreysville, after the Humphreys family who had bought the land in 1683. The town was renamed Bryn Mawr in the mid-nineteenth century by the Pennsylvania Railroad Corporation. Bryn Mawr had been the name of an estate granted to Rowland Ellis by William Penn in the 1680s.

Editorial summary

“Bryn Mawr College” enters the record as liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, US. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bryn, Mawr and College can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1885, 1683—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1885. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bryn, Mawr and College.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bryn Mawr College” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bryn, Mawr and College provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q995265. VIAF identifies the subject as 156742565. The Library of Congress control number is n50049445. Authority coordinates are 40.026, -75.314. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885 and 1683.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Bryn Mawr College primary sources, Bryn Mawr College archive and Bryn research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bryn Mawr College” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.